Hardware and the Fine Print

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Scumbag apparently means not only scoundrel but also condom, and that's usually enough to keep it out of the New York Times, except when a crossword-puzzle editor forgets the dirty definition. So on Monday, April 3, the answer to 43 Down, "Scoundrel," was an unprintable vulgar term for a prophylactic that apparently only members of the Greatest Generation know about:

The Times maintains strict lexical standards, and close watchers of the paper already know that "scumbag" has long been considered off-limits. In 1998, Indiana Rep. Dan Burton publicly said of President Clinton, "This guy's a scumbag. That's why I'm after him." But the paper, in an article specifically about the insult and Burton's refusal to apologize, still opted not to quote the congressman directly, referring instead to his "use of a vulgarity for a condom to describe the President." Exceptions have been very few: In 2005, the term did appear in an article about a juror held in contempt after he looked at a defendant and said, "I think he is a scumbag." But such instances are generally regarded as accidents.

. . . .

So, how did "scumbag" make it into the puzzle? Simple: No one realized it could be offensive. Evidence suggests that many people, especially younger speakers, are unaware of the sexual meaning (the Times' 1998 allusion to Burton's remark was particularly confusing to such people). All major general American dictionaries—Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, Webster's New World College Dictionary, the New Oxford American Dictionary, the Random House Webster's College Dictionary—include the word only in its "despicable person" sense, without any "vulgar" label or acknowledgment of its origins. The "condom" sense can be found only in the largest dictionaries, such as the Random House Unabridged and the Oxford English Dictionary, not out of ignorance or prudery, but because the sense isn't very common. And it's not even clear why "condom" is such an offensive concept.